Pythagoras school

Also known as the "Southern Italian School", it is an organization that integrates politics, academics and religion. Founded by the ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras. It came into being at the end of 6th century BC and was forced to dissolve in 5th century BC. Most of its members are mathematicians, astronomers and musicians. It is the earliest school to explore the essence of beauty in the history of western aesthetics.

Pythagoras school believes that number is the origin of all things, the essence of things is determined by a certain quantitative relationship, and everything constitutes a harmonious order according to a certain quantitative ratio; Therefore, they put forward the view that "beauty is harmony", thinking that the harmony of music is composed of tones of different heights and weights in a certain proportion. "Music is the harmonious unity of opposing factors, which leads to the unity of heterogeneity and disharmony." This is the germination of ancient Greek art dialectics, and it also contains the general principle of "keeping order in change" in art. They think that the operation order of celestial bodies is also a kind of harmony. Each planet keeps a harmonious distance, runs along its own orbit at a strictly fixed speed, and produces various harmonious tones and melodies, which are called "sounds of nature" or "sounds of nature". They also believe that the harmony of external art is consistent with the internal harmony of human soul, resulting in the so-called "simultaneous reaction." They believe that music has two styles, rigid and soft, which edify and change people's character and emotion, and emphasize the "purification" function of music.

They focus on the study of the form of beauty, and think that the most beautiful of all plane figures is the circle, and the most beautiful of all three-dimensional circles is the sphere. It is said that they first discovered the so-called "golden section" law and obtained the law of formal beauty of proportion.

The aesthetic view of Pythagoras school is objective idealism, which has a far-reaching influence on Plato, Neo-Platonism and Renaissance artists.